Thursday, 24 March 2011

Last week while doing my usual trawl of the internet for cupcake goodies I discovered these beautiful cupcake cases from Hus and Hem and I just had to get them. As well as the gorgeous Snorkmaiden ones, I got green Moomin ones and some huge oriental cases - they are massive!!

I also got, just seen in the top picture, Cake Days, the second book by Tarek Malouf of the Hummingbird Bakery and spent some time deciding what to bake with from it that was suitable for my moomin cases.

Then I remembered that Moominpappa makes punch that includes strawberry liquer and decided to make some strawberry daiquiri cupcakes. In the book these are actually mini cupcakes, but they have different timings at the back in the extensive notes so I thought it'd be simple enough.

We bought some rum and some strawberries and got baking. Well first we had to make some sugar syrup - with a load of rum in it, in which you basically boiled off all the alcohol from the rum making it a rather expensive sugar syrup. Hurumpf. Deciding I wanted a proper cocktail cupcake, I bunged in some more rum after the sugar syrup cooled - who wants a virgin cupcake? Once my strawberries were soaking in the boozy syrup I got to work on the cupcake.

The recipe called for very little butter, lots of sugar, and only one egg. When I started making it I really had some doubts about whether they'd work - the mix just looked and felt wrong. It's all pretty normal, you mix, you put into the cupcake cases with the boozy strawberries (drained from the syrup) and put them in the oven. The book says you will get 24 - 30 mini cupcakes which I assume to be half size(ish) - I got 8 or so quite measly sized normal cupcakes.

I baked them till they were golden brown and springy to the touch - however there was a bit of a wrong feel about them. You know when you can just tell? Anyways, I carried on. I put the reserved alcoholic sugar syrup on the cakes, not realising that later in the recipe it tells you you should've reserved some. Double hurumpf.

Apart from feeling wrong, they looked prettyish in their case and domed really well, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and cracked on with the frosting. Of course I didn't have the reserved sugar syrup so I substituted it with a hefty glug of rum. The frosting worked quite well and had a nice fresh taste from the lime zest, however it didn't pipe very well as my beloved 1M nozzle got squished and kinda squirty out a bit funny. They did scrub up quite well though.

Alas they look much prettier than they tasted. I can only say they tasted overly sweet with a really unpleasant after-taste. The cake was sticky (could've been the sugar syrup cuz I used too much?) and also that cheap muffin like texture you get from bad cupcakes. Really not to my taste - I actually couldn't swallow more than one bite. Manny being the guzzly guts that he is decided to persevere and ate one, saying it was ok, but then he decided on the second one they really weren't and gave up.

I will try some other recipes from the book as they look really good - there are some lovely looking whoopies in there, but I may use the cupcakes for ideas only as these were incredibly disappointing.

Never mind hun, you can't win 'em all! I think it was more the texture than the taste that was wrong. It sounds like the amounts given in the recipe were wrong, wouldn't be the first time that has happened! I loved the rum soaked strawberries, it'd be great if you customised one of the recipes you know works with them :)

How disappointing for you. I also like the look of this cookbook, but I might wait a bit longer to see how you get on with it (how cheeky am I). Absolutely love your cupcake cases tho', I used to love watching the Moonins.

I think that one slightly under-par cake is allowed given you fantastic past bakes! Regarding the book, I made the carrot and ginger cake and received a lot of compliments for it (though 4 tiers was a little too high and I decided to go with 3 so as not to have a pisa-moment) I think I'd put more ginger in it next time too

About me...

Hi, I'm Anne, a self confessed cupcake addict. I always give my (occasionally brutally) honest opinion of cupcakes I try, and my aim is to stamp out bad cupcakes. I gave up my office job earlier this year and now earn my living baking, which I love.
If you have any questions please get in touch
iheartcupcakes@hotmail.co.uk